Is it possible to only let users register with coupons?

Several free access levels have been created on a site without any paid memberships. Some of them are finite but most are infinite. The best way to divide users into the levels seems to be coupons and I would therefore like to know if it is possible to only use coupons to assign access levels to new users?

Comments 28

You can use membership plugin to create coupons which apply to different subscriptions and different access levels. For example if you create a coupon valid for subscription 1 for only Finite levels, then it would not be used on any other subscription plan.

However, if you have created Free services, and free levels, I am not sure on how you are trying to use coupons to separate them in groups.

The Membership menu is set up for paid subscriptions on another site with various access levels. There it makes sense to get a higher level according to the payment. However, this site only has free access levels.

The member groups will need access to some of the same content but most content is different for each group. The groups should somehow be auto-assigned into a specific member group(access level) at registration. My assumption is that the best way to secure this is to provide a coupon or code that will assign them to the access level. Perhaps there is another solution?

Perhaps an example will help. Let's say that I was creating a learning site for schools in a certain district and the county have already paid a fixed lump sum. All content should be restricted and every pupil, parent, teacher or administrative staff needs to have access without paying. There are several hundred pages and several thousand users.

Each school will have access to standard curriculum for a few courses available but all other content is specific to each school. The schools define the assignments, projects and extra curriculum, which should be restricted to the users at that school.

The Membership plugin provides an option for dividing the content into groups but it is not clear to me how new users can be divided into those groups. If possible the best option seems to just inform the users at each school to enter a code that will assign them to the access level group.

The idea is good but I am not able to figure out a way to do it with coupons because there is no way a coupon can decide which level to assign a user to. Its mainly used for adding a discount on the checkout.

You can use shortcodes from membership plugin to add signup links on different pages of the site and can directly provide links to the groups where they can click on the button on their page and signup and get access to the content respective to that level but again, that link if shared with other group can cause a member to signup for a group he is not supposed to access.

Perhaps the best way is to create different pages with shortcodes with separate subscriptions and password protect them.

So for teachers you have a separate page, with a separate password
For students it's a separate page with a separate password

Let me see if I can get our lead developer @Barry to provide me his thoughts here.

You got the problem right. There is a risk that users will sign up to the wrong group if there are multiple registration pages. Bulk registering is not an option because there are data protection laws stating that the schools must not share personal information to any third party. The solution therefore require the users to opt-in.

Password protecting pages is a possible solution but there is, however, an issue to deal with. Each school should have separate pages although some are common for all. How can access be given to users without the password system getting complex? The common pages would require one password and the individual pages another one. How can the user also differentiate between each password?

Ideally a coupon code or similar would result in a certain access level so that School A can to enter School A Code, School B can enter School B Code and so on, which would auto-assign them to to a certain group.

The screenshots in the invitation codes plugin page shows that a user can choose a WishList Member (WLM) level for each invitation code group that is created. The only thing to note is that the latter is not free and it can't be tested without this plugin.

I'm still hoping that Barry can find a solution for the Membership plugin. Judging from the many requests that I stumbled upon it also seems like something that should be prioritized.

Using shortcodes to create a custom registration page and password protecting the subscriptions is an acceptable solution. I am only using it on a small site for now but my expectation is to go live with it on a larger site early next year. I'll probably have to create a multisite for this as you mention.

I was too hasty before. The solution does not work. I just tried it out and a new user will not be assigned to a subsection/access level. The reason is that there are no subscription button available during the registration process.

I figured it out. The payment gateway was not set. However, the solution with password protecting the short codes does not work when activating the free subscriptions gateway. The subscription buttons does nothing so to speak.

The only way to get this working is to select the page as the Registration page under Membership Pages. However, this causes the standard subscription page to be available below the shortcodes. Attached is a screenshot of this.

I had another tread open regarding how to overwrite this and there unfortuneatly doesn't appear to be a solution. It therefore seems to be a choice between selecting the shortcodes that doesn't work or the standard registration page that can't be protected.

1. The one that Tom Eagles mentioned in the other tread.
2. Creating a second registration page.

The 2nd option was something that I missed before. What I did was to set all of the subscriptions to private. This removes all subscriptions from the selected registration page for the Membership pages. A new registration page is created using shortcodes and each subscription level is protected by a password.

The thing to note is that the 1st registration page is required as the Membership page but no subscriptions are available. This way I don't risk that someone finds the page somehow and registers.

The 2nd registration page allows users to only register from one single page where the subscription levels are protected by passwords. The reason I don't use several registration pages is that some users probably will go to the main site to register.

I've only tested the solution on my personal site so far. Go to bjerrenielsen.com > Register and use the password "PC" for the WPMU DEV access level. it just provides access to a recipe category overview and the subscription will expire after a day. I will remove the access level in a week.

The solution is actually intended for two project ideas. However, I'm not revealing anything about them right now as there is a firstmover advantage and the market is quite lucrative. For some reason nobody thought of taking online yet.

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